Green Couch Games has announced a stand alone expansion for the treehouse building game Best Treehouse Ever. Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun can be mixed with the original game, giving more variety as well as increasing the possible player count up to 8. But this can also be played on it’s own with 2 to 4 players and features some new mechanics not present in the first game. First is the addition of player powers, giving each person something they can do that others can’t. Another addition is that scoring happens in rounds instead of just at the end, and each round a different player will determine what scores that round. This brings some tension to the game as now you have to build into the different colors to be able to score ever round. Will these changes elevate this game? I think they could.

We will find out more when the Kickstarter launches in the Fall, and when the game hits store shelves in the second quarter of 2018. Read the press release below for more information.

In the new stand alone sequel to the Golden Geek Nominated Best Treehouse Ever (Best Card Game, Best Family Game, 2015), Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun, players compete to build their best treehouse, outfitting their treehouse with cool rooms, and creating fun habitats for their favorite furry and feathered friends, while also making sure that their tree doesn’t tip over and that their rooms are more impressive than all of their friends’ rooms at the end of the game.

In addition, our treehouse builders have leveled up their experience by visiting new locations in the forest that provide special abilities to help them in their new build.

Building takes place over three weeks/rounds, and in each round, players use card drafting and spatial reasoning to add five new rooms to their treehouse. Players must pay attention to the other treehouses being built since they take turns determining which types of rooms score for everyone at the end of each round.

At the end of the third week, the winner is the player with the best treehouse ever!

But the best part? Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun can be combined with Best Treehouse Ever to play up to 8 players!

Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun will be the first “Big Box” game from Green Couch Games allowing owners of the original Best Treehouse Ever to store it all in one convenient box. The game includes 60 Room Cards with all art, 12 Animal Cards, 4 Starting Tree Cards, 6 Scoring Cards, 10 Location Cards, 4 Scoring Tokens, a folding Score Board, and 4 Balance Markers. The game will feature more great art from Claire Donaldson and Andy Jewett building on the foundation created by Adam McIver with Best Treehouse Ever.

Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun is a game for 2 to 4 players (or up to 8 when combined with Best Treehouse Ever), ages 10 and up and is designed by Scott Almes. The game is set for a Kickstarter campaign in Fall of 2017 with a Q2 2018 release.

Green Couch Games was founded by Jason Kotarski to release great little games that make great big connections. Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun will be their 10th release following Fidelitas, Best Treehouse Ever, JurassAttack!, Avalanche at Yeti Mountain, Wok on Fire, Rocky Road a la Mode, OutLawed!, Ladder 29, and Before The Earth Explodes. Jason is also a game designer and co-host of the 20 Minutes of Filler Podcast.

GenCon is only one short week away, so lets see if some of these Kickstarter campaigns can take your money before you leave.

First up is the fourth campaign for the Reaper Miniatures line called Bones 4. Reaper is known for long waits from campaign to fulfillment, exemplified by the Feb 2019 delivery date, but also for high quality minis at an amazing price. This time around your $100 will get you 85 different minis in a fantasy setting, with figures of things like dragons, goblins, wizards, knights, kobolds, and more. Plus as more stretch goals get unlocked, more minis are added to the base pledge, sending it’s value skyward. So if you can wait a couple years for your minis, check out the Kickstarter campaign.

Next is a dexterity card game where you are literally throwing weapons at your opponents, called Rise of the Exiled. In Rise of the Exiled you are playing as a character from four different guild, vying for control of the city they live in. To play the game you will select your character and place them on the table. Each round you will move your character one card length, and then throw your weapon, depicted on a clear plastic card, at your opponent. Where you are located is important because your hand can’t go past your character on the table when throwing, and where you hit your opponent determines how much life they lose. You also have the option to use your character’s special ability to tip the scales in your favor, and if you are the last one standing you win. With simple play like that and varying powers between the characters, this could be a fun, light, dexterity game. Check out the Kickstarter page for more information.

After that is a deduction style game called Visitor in Blackwood Grove. In this game one player will be playing the crash landed alien, and the rest either the local kid who found him, or the agents trying to capture him. For this game the alien will make a “pass” rule for items that will pass through his force-field, and then in order the agents, kid, and alien will begin selecting cards and finding out if they pass through or not. As more information is collected eventually someone will figure out the rule, at that point they prove it by drawing four cards and classifying them based on if they pass or not. If they are right then that team wins, if they are wrong then play continues until someone does get it right. There are more rules for the agents and kid but that is the basics of the game, keeping it a light deduction game. Plus with nice looking art and good components, this project is worth it for you to look at. Check out their Kickstarter page today.

Following that is a magazine being put out by Steve Jackson Games that is all about Ogre, called Ogrezine. The Ogrezine is going to be a collection of articles about different ways you can change and modify how you play Ogre. One example they have released is the article Dambusters, which details how to use and include a dam as well as flooding into a Ogre game. This is all to celebrate 40 years of the game, and so in addition to the magazine you can back for other stuff for Ogre included the base game itself. So if you are interested in more content for you Ogre game, check out their Kickstarter page.

Next is a fantasy fire fighting game from Red Genie Games called The Brigade. In this competitive fire fighting game you are leading a fire brigade to help put out fires in the town of Tinderbox. The cause of these fires is the pyromancer school in the center of town, and they are continually raining fireballs down upon the surrounding buildings. It will be up to you to move your water carriage and fire brigade around town, putting out fires and spreading tales of your deeds to the surrounding population. You will also have the option to upgrade your fire house, get more crew, and acquire special abilities to help you better fight fires. The game will end in one of two ways, someone gets enough loyalty to the town or quarter, or the town is evacuated because of the fire, and at that point the person with the most loyalty wins. With good art and gameplay that gives you good choices while not drawing the game, I think this one is worth a look. Head to the Kickstarter page to check it out.

Another interesting game is coming from Green Couch Games called Before the Earth Explodes. The Earth is in bad shape in this game, and it’s up to you to either find the resources to fix it, or find a new place to call home. In this 2 player card game you will simultaneously select actions, with each action having different abilities and benefits. Some of these let you draw cards, gets ships, get more resources, or damage your opponent directly. And there are multiple ways you can win from eliminating your opponent, advancing all the way on the tech tree, colonizing seven planets, or satisfying the requirements for a ship card. Any way you go you will have to try and out think your opponent, because each action card has another card that blocks it, so if you are too obvious in what you are doing next, your opponent can thwart you. Plus if you take damage, you are out for the round, allowing you opponent to move forward on checked. So if you enjoy these types of games, check out the Kickstarter page for more information.

And last, but not least, we have the expansion to the quirky themed game Feudum called The Queen’s Army. What the Queen’s Army does is simply add a new AI player to the game working against the players. With this new addition you can now play the game cooperatively against the Queen, while still have a single points winner, or if you are playing solo you now have someone to play against. There are also options in this campaign to get the base game and other expansion in case you missed the original Kickstarter. So if you are looking to get into Feudum, or just want to expand your copy even more, head over to the Kickstarter page.

Myrmidon Games has launched a Kickstarter Campaign for Cubicle Raiders, a new game of inter-departmental raid and sell for 2-4 players. Players must search employee desks for office supplies, using custom dice to see how much of the indicated supplies are in the drawers. Office supplies must be turned in at the breakroom for seniority points, but only to the proper department requesting those supplies.

Seniority points can be later spent to hire new recruits to help you on your search. Be careful, because at the end of 5 days (rounds), the player with the most seniority wins. Cubicle Raiders comes with 8 Manager cards, 36 Desk Cards, 24 Recruit Cards, and 20 Department Cards for plenty of replayability.

Wizkids has announced Who Should We Eat?, a lighthearted social card game about… well… cannibalism. 4-10 players take on the roles of plane crash survivors on a deserted island, trying to gather resources to build a raft and escape. Unfortunately, food is scarce and your fellow players are edible. Players track food, resources and sanity, and trials can determine if someone is eaten.

The game comes with a set of straws for drawing long or short, but sometimes a good old fashioned knife fight is the only way to decide such matters. Eaten characters come back as ghosts and exact revenge on the living. Can anyone escape the island by collecting enough resources before their sanity runs out and win the game? Who Should We Eat? is expected in October 2017, and you can check out Wizkid’s official website description here.

Here we go, the ramp up to GenCon is beginning and we are seeing some bigger Kickstarters start to launch, here are some of the notable ones.

First is the 10th anniversary edition of the game Container, now in jumbo size. Container is an interesting game in that you are playing all aspects of the production, delivery, and acquisition of products on a small island. Each round you will decide which goods to produce, then which goods of your opponents you will ship. When you pick goods you will have to pay for them, and the price will be set by that opponent. After the goods make it out to the island you then bid for ships to be able to collect the goods, and then turn those goods into points at the end of the game. This new edition will feature the same gameplay, with the addition of the Investment Bank, but with upsized, deluxe components. The most notable being the large 7″ long plastic ships with containers that fit onto them like actual container ships. So if you enjoy the game, but want something bigger and nicer, check out the Kickstarter page today.

Next up we have a meta game, something you play while playing other games, simply called Gameception. What this card game does is add another layer to your game night with an additional game you play across the entire night. Everyone starts with two cards and each card has some action you might find happening at a game night; like a pet interferes with the game, someone tells another player what to do, or someone is on their device. If the action on your card happens, reveal it, score that card, and then draw a new one. At the end of the night, the winner is the one who scored the most cards. If this games sounds familiar then you are right, a similar type of game can be found called Pretense, but the larger variety of cards and fun stick figure artwork makes this game worthy of a look. Check out the Kickstarter page for more info.

After that is the final expansion to the Heroes Wanted game called Elements of Danger. As you think from the name of the expansion, this one adds Heroes with element based powers to the game. This expansion also adds just lots of new content to the game in new action cards, epic actions, new heroes, and new villains. Overall it adds just more of what you want in this game giving it more variety and increases the amazing number of hero combinations even higher. So if you want to get this last expansion, or to jump in and get the complete game and all expansion, check out the Kickstarter page.

Next, from A-Games is Sakura, a beautiful looking trick taking card game with some twists. On a turn you will be playing two cards, one to each pile in the middle of the table. You will either play a card of a different value but same color, direction the values must go is determined by the yin-yang symbol, or the same value of a different color. This sounds simple but sometimes not always possible, that is where you will use the coins you have to hire workers to manipulate the cards values or position to allow for you to play your cards. If you can’t play on a stack you take those cards and get coins equal to the number of coin cards, but gain points equal to the number of shuriken. Least number of points will be the winner. Check out the Kickstarter page to pledge for your copy.

Last we have another expansion for the Flash Point Fire Rescue game and that is Tragic Events. This is a simple expansion that adds three new characters, Strategist, Suppression Specialist, and Fire Prevention Specialist, and two deck of cards. These decks, Fire and Event, are the crux of the expansion as they take the place of the hot spot aspect in the advanced game, giving you a more unique experience when playing that way. The Fire deck creates more chaos as the fire spreads in random ways, and the Event deck ramps of the difficulty by changing the state of the board, forcing you to adapt. There are also stretch goals being achieved that add in the hard to come by additional POI tokens, as well as event cards to utilize them in new ways. So if you want to expand your Flash Point collection even more, head on over to the Kickstarter page today.

Magic Circle Games is releasing its first game through Kickstarter, and it has players brewing potions! Cauldron: Bubble and Boil involves 2-4 players growing and collecting ingredients to satisfy their potion recipes in order to fulfill them by game’s end. Being competent witches and warlocks, players can also steal ingredients from their neighbors, but will suffer corruption for doing so. From the publisher’s description:

During the game, you will be:

recording potion recipes (saving them for until the end of the game) that you will brew for Victory Points.

growing the potion’s ingredients in one of your two gardens.

picking some ingredients each turn until the garden is completely empty (harvesting), placing those ingredients in your cauldron. collecting a Crone Token (worth 3 Victory Points) each time you empty one of your gardens.

casting spells (called hexes) in order to expedite your harvesting, “borrowing” (read: stealing) ingredients from other players’ gardens or even randomly taking ingredients from another player’s cauldron. Often the cost of casting a hex is CORRUPTION! Corruption makes it harder to brew during the potion brewing phase.

Arguably the best part of the game? It comes with tiny cauldrons to really put you in the Potions Class mood. Find out more information from the Kickstarter here. The campaign is set to end on August 25, 2017, and delivery is scheduled for January 2018.

Dawn of the Archmage continues the rich fantasy world of Archmage Origins. Once the rulers of Sorcado, mages have fallen from power. Challengers arrive from every corner of the land. Knighted Paladins, land-hungry Lords…​ ​all seek to dethrone the mages. But mages don’t go down easily. It’s time to fight back!

SolarFlare Games announces their latest Kickstarter project, Dawn of the Archmage, a miniatures skirmish game in which each player controls a mage from a school of magic. Each player will be summoning powerful monsters to the battlefield and pitting them against the other players in battle. The winner of the game will rise above the other mages, ascending to the rank of Archmage.

Here’s a look at more from the press release for Dawn of the Archmage:

Each mage uses summoning powers to bring new and dangerous creatures to the battlefield. Expending massive mystical energy, their battle grows in frenetic power as monstrous beasts fight for the mages who control them, seeking to destroy all challengers in a magic-fueled frenzy.

In addition to summoning fearsome creatures to fight, mages possess a selection of powerful spells. With a single word, the battle can shift. Manipulating odds, controlling movement, and countering rival spells, the mage’s strategy will determine the supreme ruler of Sorcado.

The battle rages everywhere. Modular map tiles allow the mages to customize the battle area. Large, sprawling battlefields or close, confined ones…​ ​the fight is different every time. Will it be the Arena? The Forest? The Ruins? Or even Underground?

Dawn of the Archmage goes live on Kickstarter on August 1, 2017. The project features two separate pledge levels, the first including one copy of the game, and the other including a copy of the game as well as the card game Archmage Origins.

Pairs is not so much a game as it is a deck of cards, but not just a normal deck of cards, a triangle deck of cards. What is a triangle deck you ask? That is a deck where you have as many cards as the number on the card, so one 1 card, two 2 cards, three 3 cards, and so on. This allows for very different types of games to be invented and played than with your standard poker deck. Cheapass Games knows this and so they are printing a deluxe edition of Pairs, with a set of cards illustrated in a “fun retro style“, and include a Pairs Companion book which details over 30 different games you can play with the cards. Release is set for GenCon, so you can find them at the convention, or shortly after on store shelves. You can read the press release below for more information.

Cheapass Games to Release Deluxe Pairs

Deluxe Edition features new deck and booklet including over 30 games and variants

Seattle, WA—July 26, 2017. Building on the success of Pairs: A New Classic CardGame, Cheapass Games is releasing a deluxe edition that includes a brand-new deck illustrated in a fun retro style along with a Pairs Companion booklet.

Pairs is simple card game with a basic triangle deck: 55 cards numbered 1 through 10, with 1×1 2×2, 3×3, and so on up to 10×10. In the basic game, players take turns drawing cards and trying not to score a pair. Or, they may fold, and score the lowest card in play. The first player to score too many points loses the game.

The Pairs Companion contains over 30 fan-favorite games and variants that can be played with a Pairs deck, including The Judge, Deadfall, Hawthorn, and more. Some games require chips and/or a way to keep score.

It is expected to debut at Gen Con at Cheapass Games booth 1361 and will be available shortly thereafter online and in friendly local game stores.

About Cheapass Games

Cheapass Games is a small game company in Seattle Washington, specializing in quirky tabletop games. They produce deluxe games, cheap games, and free games, all of which can be found at their double-secret website cheapass.com. James Ernest has been designing games for more than 20 years, with more than 150 published titles including Kill Doctor Lucky, Give Me the Brain, Button Men, Lords of Vegas,Pairs, and Tak: A Beautiful Game.

Renegade Games has announced that they will be reprinting and updating the card game Dragon’s Hoard. In this game you are a dragon trying to hoard the most treasure, go figure, and to get that treasure you will need sheep of all different colors. The game is a card drafting game at the start where you are drafting difference colored sheep from a common supply. After everyone has finished drafting, the action phase begins and you will buy cards with your sheep, attack your opponents, and defend against attacks from them. In the end, whoever manages to hold onto the most valuable hoard of treasure wins.

The box cover art by Jonas Akerlund looks incredible, and hopefully that carries over into the game art as well. The game will be available on store shelves in the fall, and until then you can read the full press release below for more information.

Dragon’s Hoard Releasing Fall 2017
San Diego, CA (July 27th, 2017) Renegade Game Studios is pleased to announce the upcoming release of Dragon’s Hoard, a drafting card game designed by Nathanael Mortensen’s with stunning art by Jonas Akerlund. The release is planned for fall 2017.

In Dragon’s Hoard, each player plays a dragon hunting for treasure. Collect chromatic sheep from the farmer’s fields and use them to acquire marvelous treasures, but watch out! Other players will send angry mobs and wizards your way to stop you. Defend yourself and battle your way to riches.

Draft cards from a common draw pile before taking actions each turn. Purchase as many treasures as possible using the cards in your hand. Dragons buy treasures with sheep that they’ve collected, while opponents will play terrible actions against you to keep you from tending those sheep.Battle to keep your treasure, while preventing your opponents from doing the same.

At the end of the game, the player with the most victory points from treasures and bonuses wins!

“When we were first introduced to this game, we instantly fell in love with the unique mechanics and the whimsical fantasy theme”, recalls Scott Gaeta, President of Renegade Game Studios. “As we dove further into the game, we really appreciated the great strategy choices, and of course the chromatic sheep! We look forward to sharing Nathanael’s lovely game with our fans.”

This fall, 2-4 clever dragons of ages 8 and up will flock to their local game store to collect valuable treasure for 25-45 min in this card drafting, hand management, set collection game.